The GOP Might Still Be Trump’s Party. But That Doesn’t Mean There’s Room For Him
Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump crossed lines that no other president has come close to. And if there was ever any doubt, the final months of his presidency put that to rest.
From the moment President Biden was declared the winner, Trump refused to accept the results of the election, repeatedly dismissing them as rigged or fraudulent, even going so far as to pressure Republican officials, like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to overturn them. This culminated in the events of Jan 6. At a rally that day, Trump told his supporters that the election was being stolen and said, “Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.” A few hours later, some of those supporters stormed the Capitol, threatening officials and destroying property. They also disrupted the certification of the Electoral College vote, usually a ceremonial affair. Five people died.
Nevertheless, Trump still commands considerable loyalty within the Republican Party. Only 10 of 211 Republicans in the House voted to impeach him over what happened at the Capitol, and even though Trump is now facing a second impeachment trial, a procedural vote forced by Senate Republicans in late January indicates that there will not be enough votes to convict him.
This lack of a clean break among Republicans with Trump — despite being the only president to be impeached twice — raises an important question about the future of the GOP: To what extent does it remain Trump’s party?
Given the ways in which Trump defied the norms of the presidency, it can be hard to compare his track record to other presidents. However, it’s still worth looking at the role that former presidents have traditionally played in their party once they’ve left the White House, and how Trump does — and does not — fit into that mold.
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What’s difficult to say with Trump, however, is the extent to which future generations of Republicans will want to claim his mantle. On the one hand, it’s not actually clear that Trump had a winning electoral formula. In 2016, he built a coalition of more traditional Republican voters as well as white voters without college degrees, and that coalition was adequate for an Electoral College victory. But even growing that voter base in 2020 wasn’t enough to win reelection. When you combine this with the Republican Party’s losses in 2018 and its narrow loss of Senate control in the Georgia run-off elections in January, there are some reasons to believe that the Trump brand hasn’t been entirely good for Republican political fortunes. In fact, a number of reports suggest that congressional Republicans, as well as party donors, blame Trump for the party’s losses in Georgia.
The thing is, Trump does represent an idea that has appealed to some of his party’s voters: politics based on grievance, especially when linked to white identity. Trump has emerged as a powerful leader to this movement, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen, that the media and tech companies seek to silence voices on the right, and that institutions no longer work for “ordinary” (read: white) Americans. And while many establishment GOP members don’t agree with some of Trump’s more extreme words and actions, they have continued to defend him, or, at the very least, not really distance themselves from him. The upcoming impeachment trial and the fact that most GOP senators are likely to vote against his conviction speak to a long pattern left over from when Trump was still in office: criticize Trump’s actions, but ultimately don’t disavow him.
But while the party has maintained its steady, if uncomfortable, pattern of loyalty to Trump, the sheer number of ambitious politicians seeking to succeed Trump may leave little room for him in the party. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn have already proven, for instance, that they can grab headlines with their extreme views and actions without Trump. (And as with Trump, the media coverage is not overwhelmingly positive, and they have drawn some criticism from within their own party.) Of course, there is still a key difference between them and Trump in terms of power and influence: A group of representatives can make up a faction of a party, but only the president serves as the party’s mouthpiece.